Author: buddycushman

More from the Gary Snyder book ‘The Practice of the Wild’ – chapter Blue Mountains Constantly Walking:

“There is a story of Coyote watching the yellow autumn cottonwood leaves float and eddy lightly down to the ground. It was so lovely to watch, he asked the cottonwood leaves if he might do it too. They warned him: ‘Coyote, you are too heavy and you have a body of bones and guts and muscle. We are light, we drift with the wind, but you would fall and be hurt.’

“Coyote would hear none of it and insisted on climbing a cottonwood, edging far out onto a branch, and launching himself off. He fell and was killed. There’s a caution here: do not be too hasty in setting out to ‘become one with.’

“But, as we have heard, Coyote will roll over, reassemble his ribs, locate his paws, find a pebble with a dot of pitch on it to do for an eye, and trot off again.”

This is kind of why I don’t need to talk too much….

I’ve never been so autumn before.

One of those mornings where I wake up and after a few moments have a moment of awe that I’m still here.

I call for a tribal gathering with my long-ago gone friends – Bob, Doug, Billy. Yesterday I was downtown, in the Chinese Garden and off riding the Max way out to Milwaukie and back, just to be riding. Dropped off, sitting in Pioneer Square a while, Max-ed home, and not much later a person moved through downtown stabbing people with a boxcutter.

Isn’t life so fragile? I could have been the fourth name on the party list – Bob, Doug, Billy, Buddy. Maybe I already am and just don’t know it yet. But here I am writing in the blog, and in a few minutes I have online work with my teacher and a couple hours later a telephone interview for a job that reads like I could do it in my sleep, but probably won’t get: ancient and eccentric and forever leaning into the goofy. Exactly the way Bob and Doug and Billy would want it.

So, apparently still here, and off later to the Rhododendron garden to sit on one of the benches or another, dazzled and grateful, shining on for the kids long gone.

I have been eating so much zucchini these days I may have become green, like the late-summer lawns I pass on lazybones walks. I realized, walking through the park off my spontaneous riding the Max downtown and back, my ongoing electric awareness of vivid autumn colors on perfect fallen leaves there, as on streets and sidewalks.

There is a question – ‘What is the sound of one hand?’ An ancient Master advised, “It’s not a sound you hear with your ears.” Veering off an afternoon walk to hop the red line; giving my seat to a young black girl on the way back; believing even John Singer Sargent would thrill to the art of a Portland leaf on the ground. This is why being broke is not too bad. Not too bad at all.

As for the zucchini – it sure is good, sauteed in coconut oil.

This morning, before the alarm and through sleepy eyes, a spot of darkness on the bedroom curtain, and a centipede hustles away, taking its venom and hunger with it. Do the hustle.

All the 4am while the great copper beech a block over offers its transforming autumn leaves to the late-morning breeze – not yet arrived. But promised.

“Let’s live together,” sang Canned Heat. As if there’s a choice.

So, yes, thinking of the things I’ve never done. I’m glad I’ve done some physical work in my days. And rubbed girls’ feet, and changed diapers. Because now quick conversations with crows is the most of it. Still, the word resilience.

There is something so special about a pumpkin sitting on a porch step, just that, when there’s nothing but wandering. Autumn in the quiet of a cool afternoon.

The joy of carrying on….

I heard I had sold a painting yesterday and celebrated by buying two very different pair of sweat pants online, same day delivery. I opened the packages last night and tried them on and of course they were too big. I am no longer the same me.

I don’t return things. So, wearing these pants I’ll be like a cloud that seems to have spilled out beyond itself. Cherry orange glow, this very me as sunset.

Master Dogen says, “A mountain always practices in every place.” See what I mean.

It’s supposed to rain today and it hasn’t rained the last three times it was supposed to rain, and every time I make rainy day plans and after a while break them, and in this lonely existence no one knows, for all they know I may be planning a financial empire on a Friday, and while anything is possible – blue mountain is walking – I’d place my bet on watching a movie my son highly recommends.

And I guess the biggest puzzle for a day it rains or it doesn’t is where can I go to find a place for comfortable typing so the typing gets back in the swing of things and cracks open a new book by me which may be about a kid deciding to pretend to be crazy, and all the possible adventures forthcoming.

yesterday’s plan was to early afternoon walk to the Max station and take the Max into Old Town/Chinatown and over a couple of blocks to the Lan Su Chinese Garden to buy a membership for $45 which has been the plan the seven plus months I’ve been back, and some five hours earlier at the coffee shop discovered in email that one of my subscribers here had sent me $50 as her way of supporting this blog/this me, which she does every few months, so now I’m a member and even my earlier coffee was paid for.

and still no job these seven plus months of consistent, mostly devoted search, and yesterday watching ‘The Social Network’ on YouTube hear this quote – “Harvard students believe inventing a job is better than finding a job.” And it’s a rush of excitement for me, even with no clue.

photos courtesy Lan Su Chinese Garden:

this is my painting, which is titanium white slathered over some previous painting and then a black-only plan to paint a duck in a wetlands – something like that. As I’ve noted recently, who knows how things go? Sitting in the recliner this morning (photo taken from recliner) I saw that if I had the water up to the duck’s body it may have been more duck-like – there’s something about the legs. And making use of an artist technique to have an appearance out from the edge, up top was supposed to be a branch and all of a sudden there was a bird and then there was a kingfisher. My book about the joy in the journey of sobriety – ‘The Joy in the Journey’ – ends with a chapter titled, ‘Kingfisher.’

most exciting is the title for this painting which came to me out of absolutely nowhere – “The little take care of the big.” How could that ever be anything but wonderful.